NASA engineers
successfully freed a stuck metal pin on the space shuttle Atlantis late Tuesday,
but the work delayed plans to roll the spacecraft out to its Florida launch pad
this week.
Atlantis
was slated to move out its seaside
Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Cape Canaveral,
Fla., on Saturday, but a metal guide pin that jammed while engineers attempted
to route a liquid hydrogen fuel line between the shuttle and its external fuel tank
set the process back a few days.
"They got
it out last night," NASA spokesperson Allard Beutel of KSC told SPACE.com
of the pin today. The space shuttle is now scheduled to roll out to the launch
pad no earlier than next Tuesday morning.
Atlantis is
slated to launch early Oct. 8 at 1:34 a.m. EDT (0534 GMT) with seven astronauts
aboard to pay
a final service call on the iconic Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA opted
to delay Atlantis' launch pad move to allow time for inspections and the
reattachment of the fuel line umbilical, agency officials said. Launch
preparations were also delayed
by several days last week when NASA closed down its Florida spaceport during
Tropical Storm Fay, but Atlantis work crews had some time to spare, they added.
"We have
several days of cushion time," Beutel said.
NASA shuttle
workers had about 11 days of padding in their Atlantis work schedule before
Tropical Storm Fay hit, said KSC spokesperson Candrea Thomas. The team will still
have three days in reserve on Tuesday, when Atlantis is expected to begin the
3.5-mile (5.6-km) trip to Launch Pad 39A at about 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT),
she added.
Beutel also
told SPACE.com that while Atlantis is prepared for flight, engineers are
also hunting for the source of an odd sound heard when another shuttle fuel
tank, reserved for the Endeavour orbiter, was hoisted into a vertical position.
A series of checks have found no damage to the tank or its surrounding support
structure to date, he added.
Endeavour
is currently slated to launch Nov. 10 to deliver supplies and equipment to the
International Space Station. But NASA is also priming the shuttle to serve as a
rescue ship for Atlantis' crew should that spacecraft suffer critical heat
shield damage.
Unlike NASA's
recent shuttle missions, Atlantis astronauts will not be able to seek refuge
aboard the space station if their spacecraft is damaged because the Hubble telescope
is in a higher orbit and different inclination than the station. NASA plans to perch
Endeavour atop a second shuttle launch pad and ready it to fly within 25 days
of an emergency, if required, Atlantis astronauts have said.
Atlantis' mission
to Hubble will mark NASA's fifth
and final shuttle flight to upgrade the orbital observatory. Shuttle astronauts
are expected to replace gyroscopes, batteries, install new instruments and equipment,
and make unprecedented repairs during the 11-day mission's five back-to-back
spacewalks.
The Hubble
mission is also NASA's fourth of up to five planned shuttle flights scheduled
for 2008.
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